One

Size: 36" Wide x 60" Tall
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
2007


No Longer Available


The most basic of all glyphs is the vertical line, originally a tally mark depicting a single unit. Since it also has connotations of God, a single vertical mark --- centered, bold and white --- was used as the first/original mark on this painting.

The sensuous Sanskrit glyph for one that overlays the white, vertical ONE mark means refined, consecrated and sanctified. Sanskrit (4,000 years + writing system), considered the "high, classical" Indian language, is used in religious and scientific applications, much as the romantic languages consider Latin to be classical and use it for religious and scientific applications. Sanskrit is the liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.

The Sanskrit word for one, (pronounced eka), in the upper left, has been filled with Sanskrit text, which is translated as:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards ONE another in a spirit of brotherhood.
This is Article ONE of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Other interesting facts:

• ONE is the only digit that, when pronounced in English, has the same number of syllables as its valueIn all monotheistic cultures, ONE is identified with God.
• ONE has an interesting double meaning: first/smallest and most whole/complete.
• ONE is also the:
• First odd number (and the smallest positive odd number)
• First ordinal number (FIRST, PRIMARY, PRINCIPAL, INITIAL, BEGINNING)
• Lowest cardinal number
  *has two cardinal values:
  SMALLEST, MOST BASIC UNIT (one, unit, unity, solo, single, mono, uni-)
  WHOLE, COMPLETE, TOTALITY (we are one---with the universe, nature
• Atomic Number for Hydrogen
• Aries is the first astrological sign of the Zodiac
• Ancient Greece: 1 was not a number, only a unit. Two was considered the first proper number.
• ONE is the square of ONE, and also the cube of ONE.

Two

Painting Title: Two

2007

42" w x 34" t Diptych (each piece is 21" x 34")

Acrylic on Board

Available through Fly Coop Studios, Asheville, North Carolina

To evoke a sense of the number 2, this piece was painted on 2 panels. The 21" width and 34" height are in the Fibonacci Series of numbers, making their relationship approximating the Golden Ratio…the space is then divided into that relationship. The lower portion has strips of space that are broken down into Fibonacci Series dimensions also. The 2 large black dots were the Glyph used by the Mayans to depict the number 2. It is important to retain a sense of humor when dealing with all this, so included in this painting is this bit of silliness which reads: tea for two, couples, dos equis which is pretty good beer…2 sides to every story, 2 sides of the bed which actually has four, as well as 2 halves in a whole, 2 ends to every length, and humans have 2 legs, 2 arms, 2 eyes, 2 ears, 2 nostrils, 2 breasts. The 2 of Clubs is the lowest card in the deck. If you wear a tu-tu, you might dance a pas de deux. 2 wings on a bird. 2 tusks on an elephant. A 2 is necessary for the concept of opposites. It’s the first even number. Words for the number 2 in different languages used throughout the painting: Ancient Greek: duo Anglo-Saxon: twegen Aramaic: tareyn Armenian: erku Avestan: bae Baltic: dy, dyj Breton: diou Chinese: er Danish: to Dutch: twee English: two, distich, deuce, double,doubleton, due, duo, pair, twain, yoke, binary, brace, couple, couplet, duad, dyad, span, twosome French: dau German: zweni Old High German: zwene Gothic: twai, twa Hebrew: bet Italian: deux Indian: dvi, ashvin, yamala, Yugala, netra, bahu, Yama, qulphau, paksha Japanese: ni, putatu Korean: tul Latin/Roman: dos Lithuanian: du, dvi Oscan: duo, duae Old Erse: dau Old Icelandic: tveir Old Saxon: twene Polish: dwa Romanian: do Russian: dvau, dva, dvi Church Slavonic: duva, duve Sanskrit: dvau, dva, dvi Scots Gaelic: dwy, dau Spanish: doi, dos Swedish: tva Thai: song Tokharian A: ta Tokharian B: wu, we Welsh: dow

Three

Size: Triptych 36" wide x 33" tall
        (each piece is 12" wide x 33" tall)

Medium: Mixed Media on Wood

2007

Available through Marion Drennen

Ancient Tally Sticks and Clay Tablets that were used for accounting were the inspiration for this piece. Some glyphs are copies of ancient hieroglyphs that were actually used, some I made up.

Tally sticks were used in the same way we use a tally mark now, to count up to 4, then make a mark across it to signify 5 and so on…because the human eye cannot perceive of more than 4 at one time (see "Five").

When tallies were kept on a piece of wood, it was split in half, with one half kept by the seller and one half kept by the purchaser…to prevent either side from changing the quantities.                                               

There’s a famous painting by J. M. William Turner titled The Burning of The Houses of Lords and Commons. It depicts an 1834 fire in London that was started accidentally because they decided to burn all the old tally sticks.

Charles Dickens said, "… it took until 1826 to get these sticks abolished. In 1834 ... there was a considerable accumulation of them. ... What was to be done with such worn-out worm-eaten, rotten old bits of wood? The sticks were housed in Westminster, and it would naturally occur to any intelligent person that nothing could be easier than to allow them to be carried away for firewood by the miserable people who lived in that neighborhood. However [the sticks were no longer] useful and official routine required that they never should be, and so the order went out that they should be privately and confidentially burned. It came to pass that they were burned in a stove in the House of Lords. The stove, over-gorged with these preposterous sticks, set fire to the paneling; the paneling set fire to the House of Commons; the two houses [of government] were reduced to ashes; architects were called in to build others; and we are now in the second million of the cost thereof."

Big Tally

2006

Size: 36" Wide x 60" Tall
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas

No Longer Available

Big Tally was based on ancient accounting methods. Pre-historic man made notches on bones. In Mesopotamia, 10,000 years ago, the Sumerians developed the first system of abstract numerical representation.

The Mesopotamian cuneiform writing system developed (5,000 years later) from this ancient clay token accounting system. In the 4th millennium B.C., the Mesopotamian accountants began enclosing tokens in clay envelopes (bullae) and impressing the tokens on the outside to indicate the contents.

Later, a pointed stylus was used to incise pictures of tokens in clay tablets instead of impressing the actual tokens. The stylus impressed a wedge shaped mark. (The Latin word cuneus means wedge, thus the name cuneiform.)

In the early token system, the concept of number was not distinct from the concept of the type of item counted. (ie: Ovals were used to represent jars of oil. Jars of oil could only be counted using these ovals.) Gradually, modifications to this accounting system led to an increasingly abstract form of counting.

It wasn’t until about 3,100 B.C. that the first numerals were invented.

To pay homage to those ancient accountants, Big Tally floats in a world of glyphs and marks that allude to quantities, objects, and the recording of information. It is not intended to be an actual depiction of a clay tablet or bulla, only an artist’s interpretation.